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Hugging Bear-With-Me

Bear-With-Me consists of two interactive bears capable of detecting squeeze, touch, and motion, which enables remote partners to send and receive hugs

Given the busy day-to-day schedule of families and couples, communication between loved ones is often limited to text-messaging, email, or phone calls. These forms of communication do not allow for more tangible modes of intimate expression like hugging. While previous work has explored sending tangible forms of emotion like hugging, this work has been limited by not supporting or encouraging users to reciprocate emotional pings or “hugs.” In this paper, we introduce Bear-With-Me, a prototype system that allows users to exchange tangible expressions of emotions, such as hugs, in real-time. In contrast to previous work, Bear-With-Me is mobile, tangible, bi-directional, and realtime allowing for new types of exchanges of emotional, embodied communication. In this paper, we present our system design, results from a preliminary pilot study, and a discussion of future work.